Although they sound the same, the three are different in
important ways.

Here's the basics about what you need to know about each:

Apple Pay and Samsung Pay have a similar purpose, will work in
different places

The main purpose of both Apple Pay and Samsung Pay is to let you
buy things in physical stores using your phone.

Apple Pay only works on the company's latest iPhones in retailers
with near-field communication (NFC) technology. Over 200,000
retailers support Apple Pay, but not every retailers' sales
system supports NFC.

Samsung Pay will also only work with the company's latest phone,
the S6. However, Samsung's phones will work with NFC
technology but also standard magnetic credit
card readers, thanks
to its recent acquisition of LoopPay. Because most U.S.
retailers already have magnetic strip readers, more will
automatically be able to accept Samsung Pay (the company says
that 30
million merchant locations globally already have the
potential to work with Samsung Pay).

"Apart from this key distinction between the
two payment products, Samsung Pay largely has
the same product attributes as Apple Pay," according
to Evan Bakker,
research associate for BI Intelligence.

Apple Pay launched in October and Samsung Pay will launch
this summer, but both rely on shoppers using their fingerprint to
authenticate purchases and neither Apple nor Samsung will
have any access to information about what users bought or how
much they paid.

Android Pay is a platform, not a product that people will use in
stores, like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay

Since 2011, Google has offered a mobile wallet app that shoppers
can use at some retailers with NFC technology.

But unlike "Google Wallet," Android Pay is is not a product.

Instead, it's an API layer in Android that will be able to
power in-app and in-store mobile payments capabilities for any
Android-based app. Google Wallet, for example, will be powered by
Android Pay's technology.

In that way, Android Pay isn't strictly a competitor to either
Samsung Pay or Apple Pay. At Mobile World Conference, Pichai said
Google will try to ensure that
Android Pay and Samsung Pay can "align"
and said the two services were being rolled out on different
timelines.

Google wants Android Pay to become a successful platform because
it would be a simple way for the billion people who use Android
phones to pay for things — Pichai called out China and India as
places where he hopes to see developers build "innovative
services" with Android Pay.

It would also potentially mean offline purchasing data for Google
that it could use to better target its online ads (a key
distinction between Google Wallet and Apple or Samsung Pay is
that Google "sees" every transaction that a user makes).

Since the company launched
Wallet in 2011, the service hasn't quite taken off, but
it passed
a major hurdle recently it when acquired assets
from Softcard, a mobile payments company backed by Verizon,
AT&T, and T-Mobile. Now, when you buy a new Android
phone from any of the major US carriers, that phone will have the
Google Wallet app pre-installed.

Bonus: PayPal may not have "PayPal Pay" but it just made a huge
mobile payments acquisition

Paydiant powers the Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Wallet
competitor, CurrentC. CurrentC, which will launch this year, is
the mobile wallet of a consortium of big-box retailers including
Wal-Mart, Target, and 7-Eleven. By buying Paydiant, PayPal comes
hard into brick-and-mortar mobile payments as a retailer's
ally.

As Re/code's Jason Del Rey explains it:

Many retailers don’t want to be beholden to a dominant payments
service, whether it’s from Apple or Google. Ultimately, some may
decide it benefits them to have other players such as PayPal
offering alternatives.